Revived O2 takes control of its destiny

After years of being seen as acquisition fodder, Peter Erskines company is able to look for deals of its own. By Paul Durman

PETER ERSKINE is used to being underestimated. When he was made chief executive of what is now O2 as the mobile network operator prepared to demerge from BT, few gave him — or his company — much chance of survival.

With his bristling moustache, and guileless manner, he seemed to lack the stature of the typical FTSE 100 boss. Worse, he was the man from BT — the only board-level survivor from one of the most ill-conceived acquisition binges of millennium merger madness.

Besides saddling BT with £30 billion of debt, this created a mobile group that owned struggling BT Cellnet in Britain, a loss-making business in Germany, a weak position in the Netherlands and an onerous contract to build a secure telecom network for Britain’s police.

For 18 months Erskine went round apologising to critical investors about the state of his business — making it clear that in the unlikely event that anyone